1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a private branch exchange (PBX) (or network hosted device) which can automatically disable a music-on-hold feature for one of it's extensions that is attached to a device (e.g., phone) which belongs to a user when that user happens to be participating in a multi-party conference call being hosted by an external conference/collaboration bridge. This is desirable because if the user places their device on-hold then no music or other sound will be injected into the multi-party conference call.
2. Description of Related Art
A PBX typically has a music-on-hold feature such that if a user places their phone on-hold then the other party hears music/radio/company information etc. . . . This is fine in most situations. But, if the user is participating in a multi-party conference call that happens to be hosted by an external conference/collaboration bridge then this music-on-hold feature can be problematic. In particular, if the user places their phone on hold to take another phone call or to simply take a break from the multi-party conference call then music (or some other sound) is going to be played on the conference bridge to the annoyance of the other participants.
Today, this problem can be addressed if the conference/collaboration bridge has a voice activity detection (VAD) system or a signal energy detection system which can detect the conference legs that are contributing to the call. This enables one to determine which conference leg happens to be playing the music-on-hold when a participant is no longer participating in the multi-party conference call. And, if the conference/collaboration bridge has a graphical user interface (GUI) that can be used by a conference host to mute the offending music that is flooding the conference bridge because that particular participant has placed their phone on-hold. However, this solution has several drawbacks which include: (1) the multi-party conference call is disrupted until the extension being used by the offending person is muted; (2) the conference host needs to have access to the GUI; and (3) the conference host needs to focus their attention on solving this problem which can be very disruptive especially if they are also speaking or presenting at the same time. Accordingly, there has been and is a need to solve this problem which is done by the present invention.